EBay's latest Asian pursuit has global tech analysts watching Viet Nam.  After trying and failing to enter the Chinese market, eBay has acquired a stake in Peacesoft, a Vietnamese e-commerce company.  Forbes contributor Rebecca Fannin says this new venture presents an interesting case study for the potential of the Viet Nam as "the next frontier in Asia for tech investment." She cautions us not to expect Viet Nam's tech market to be on par with China or Silicon Valley, but it could still be a key spot:

How this new eBay of Vietnam fares could impact many business models that have been adopted from the U.S. and China and are being tried in Vietnam now. There’s an Amazon and Dangdang of Vietnam – that’s VinaBooks. There’s a Google and Baidu of Vietnam – that’s Socbay. In Forbes, I wrote about how its risk-taking founder Nguyen Xuan Tai even turned down an acquisition offer from the Mountain View-based search giant back in 2006 and now owns the mobile search market in Vietnam – way ahead of Google.

You can bet that Vietnam now has multiple GroupOns as well. The lead one is NhomMua.vn, invested in by GroupOn cloner Rebate Networks from Berlin and IDG Ventures Vietnam.

China’s social networking giant Tencent  has a copy too – Zing from an upstart in Saigon, VNG, which I wrote about in Forbes Asia.  Tellingly, Tencent invested in VNG and its former M&A director Johnny Shen joined the Vietnamese upstart in 2008 as chief financial officer and executive vice president of business development and strategy.

Vietnam’s talented and entrepreneurial software whizzes are the draw. But make no mistake –the market’s ecosystem for tech venture is no match for Silicon Valley or China’s own innovation hotspots. This nation of 89 million people has a relatively low 27 million Internet users but does rank up there with 66 million mobile phone subscribers, with newly launched third-generation mobile service beginning to take off.

Read eBay Tries Vietnam After China Bust here.